WIP Wednesday 11-20-2013

I have a few things to share with everyone today. 

First off are my Christmas tablerunners off of my 4th quarter finish-a-long list (#8 on the list).  I buckled down and spent a few days pebble quilting both of these, and of love the way they turned out (which I knew I would). 

And even though it wasn't on my Finish-A-Long list, after seeing photos of Better Off Thread's finished Advent calendar on Instagram I knew I had to make one.  Mine has only 12 pockets since I intend to use it during the 12 days of Christmas, but the pockets are larger so the finished product ends up being the same size as the 24 pocket version. 

As you can see I used the same fabrics from my tablerunners (and consequently the tree skirt I made last year) so everything matches, and I pebble quilted the calendar as well.  Once I have my decorations up for Christmas I'll have to take a photo to share of everything "in action".

My last thing to share is what's currently up on my design wall.  This is #3 on my Finish-A-Long list.  These are the 9 blocks for the quilt I'm making my niece (who was born yesterday-- 2 weeks early but doing great).  I have the first layer of the monster applique on but I still have to add in all the details on the faces.  I hope to get this quilt completed by Thanksgiving so my mom can hand deliver it to my sister and the baby when she goes out to meet them.  They live in Hawaii and sadly it will be many months until my husband and I will be able to meet their little girl.

You'll have to forgive the quality of the photos.  It's overcast and grey here and since that doesn't happen very often in Southern California I'm not very good at setting up lighting.  I also had to snap these photos quickly so I could write this post and hopefully get some sewing done while the baby's still napping.

Oh! And if you didn't see it my Men's Wallet Tutorial was featured on the Sew Mama Sew blog as a part of their Handmade Holidays roundup in the "Gifts for Men" post.  To check out the Sew Mama Sew post click here, to go straight to my wallet tutorial click here.

Penny's Quilt + Blogger's Quilt Festival

I have a quilt to share with everyone today that I'm really excited about.

You could even say that this quilt was 9 months in the making..... but not really.

Here it is..... Penny's quilt



This is the quilt I made my daughter Penelope.  It's definitely the showcase of her woodlands-themed nursery and everything else in the nursery evolves around it.  This is my baby quilt entry for the Fall 2013 Blogger's Quilt Festival.



I love the colors.  SO bright and fun without reading either "boy" or "girl".  The fabric inspiration was the "Fox Hollow" line by Monaluna (which I used in the border and the centers of the dresdens),  paired with five different more basic prints.


For the pattern I was inspired by this quilt by Melissa of Polka Dot Chair, but I wanted the border to be a little more fun and show off the different prints in the Fox Hollow line, and I wanted to frame the quilt a little more so I added in the gingham piping between the center panel of the quilt and the border.  It gives the quilt such fun dimension.



I chose the fabric placement for the centers of the dresdens very purposefully.  The center of the large dresden has a frog under a flower because Penny's daddy's nickname as a child was "Toad".  The smallest dresden has a little gnome poking out of his stump house because gnomes are mommy's favorite.  The mid-sized dresden has a momma fox being followed by her two babies, with a papa fox watching, because the fox family reminds me of our family (though of course we only have one child so far).




For the quilting, I didn't want to distract too much from the quilt top, but I did want to add a lot of free motion quilting, so I did things a little differently.... I had two layers of batting and quilted the top and back separately.  It gives the quilt a heavier weight, but since I was using fairly thin cotton batting it worked out well.  On the quilt top there's quilting around each square in the border and each spike in the dresdens.  I used the blanket stitch on my sewing machine.  The look it gives each dresden plate is fantastic.



The back is quilted in an allover design with flowers.  It was quite fun to do once I got the hang of it. Once I had the back and front quilted individually I did some quilting that tied the whole quilt together.



I love it and I hope it's something Penny can treasure when she's older. She was kind of cranky when I was taking these photos so she's not in any of them, but I hope to get a shot or two of her on the quilt tomorrow to share with everyone.

edited 10/25/13: The photoshoot was well worth the wait.  While I had 200+ mediocre photos of a blurry baby, all the shots were worth it to get this one perfect shot of my little girl.



 She's still a little blurry and the quilt is slightly out of focus, but that smile is to die for.  (And yes, she's wearing the little mini dirndl I made her for Halloween, but I'll post about that in a few days).

Quilt Stats:
Pattern: Loosely adapted from this pattern by Melissa of Polka Dot Chair
Fabrics: Various Fox Hollow by Monaluna prints + basics in red, green, and blue
Quilted: By me on my home machine
Dimensions: 36" x 46"
Completed: March 2013

Thanks for looking, and please think of Penny's quilt (and my baby's perfect little smile) when it comes time to nominate your favorite baby quilt!

To check out my 2012 entry in the Blogger's Quilt Festival that took "favorite hand quilted quilt" check out this post.

WIP Wednesday 10-23-13

Ever since posting my 4th quarter list of finishes for the 2013 Finish-A-Long I've been plugging away at items from my list.

Progress I've made so far:

Goal #2: I've labeled 1 quilt

Goal #3: I've narrowed my fabric selections down, but I've also realized I need more lavender prints so I'm waiting on those

But I do need some input: Which looks better, background #1 or background #2?

Goal #4: Paper pieces for EPP all cut and ready to go

Goal #11: Quilting completed, now just need to purchase and sew on binding

And then from my list of other goals (but not WIP goals) I've made a lot of progress on the Halloween costume for the Babe that will also double as an outfit for Oktoberfest. 

This is my hack of the Geranium dress by Made by Rae.  I still need to add snaps in the back, hem it, and add elastic to the sleeves to make them puffy sleeves... but I need to actually try these on Penny before I do all that.  I also need to sew an apron for it.

Over the weekend my husband and I took Penny out to Oak Grove, CA to go pumpkin picking.  It was a beautiful day, and we had a terrific time.

The Past Eight Months

How the time flies!  I knew I had been neglecting my blog but it's hard for me to come to terms with the fact that it's been eight months since my last post... and even that was just a quick post and not anything substantial.

What have I been up to?  Well, I had a baby, and since she's been born I've spent all my time loving her and thinking about how utterly perfect I think she is.

Honestly though, in the two months since I gave birth I haven't done a whole lot of sewing, but in the months leading up to her birth I was sewing like crazy, so I hope to be able to start posting about all that stuff I made as soon as I finish taking pictures of it.

In the meantime, here's a recap of my past 8 months, Instagram style:

And while I'm at it, since I missed the big exodus from Google Reader to Bloglovin' because I was in a hospital giving birth, I'll use this post to claim my blog on Bloglovin'.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin'

***All photos on this blog, unless otherwise noted, are the sole property of Stephanie Granite and may not be used without expressed written permission.***

I'm Making Something Extra Special!

Hi everyone!

Sorry I've been gone so long from the blogging world.  I have a good excuse though--  I've been busy making something extra special!  A baby!!!

That's right! My husband and I are happy to say that we're expecting our first baby this summer.  My first trimester has been full of sickness and I've been dog tired, but I'm just now coming out if it and I'm happy to say that I've been feeling a lot better and am finally able to spend some time in my sewing room again.

Hopefully I'll be back to having quilty photos for you soon, but in the mean time here's a different kind of photo to enjoy!

This pic is from my ultrasound 3 weeks ago

Sewing for Babies

This past week I've been super swamped making baby quilts and I love it!

When I got home from camping I immediately began working on a baby quilt for my friend Claire's new baby boy. I went fabric shopping last Wednesday with Rebeckah at M & L fabric discount store in Anaheim and we came back with several steals (especially since everything in the store was 20% off!) including the fabric to make this beauty:

 

The large blocks are cut from a panel of 8 images from Robert Kaufman's Animal Party Too! collection.  We used a yellow stripe from my stash for sashing around the large blocks and for binding, and then we used 3 coordinating prints from the Animal Party Too! collection for the stacked coins panels.  The backing is yet another coordinating print with fun blue stripes.

 

Rebeckah and I teamed up on this quilt like we normally do when it's for a mutual friend.  She did the sashing while I did the stacked coins, and then I sewed the top together.  Together we sandwiched and basted it, and then she quilted it.  I made and attached the binding and then both of us sewed it down by hand old-fashioned quilting bee style.

We worked together a little more on this quilt than we usually do because we only had 2 days to get it done!  Even working together we were still sewing the binding down when Claire arrived for the baby shower.  Luckily though we were able to hide out for the few minutes it took us to finish the quilt and nobody was the wiser.

Besides the stress of getting a quilt done last minute the downside to rushing is that there's no time to get a decent photo.  The above photos were snapped in my living room during the shower around 10 at night so you'll have to forgive the horrible lighting (and the fact that the quilt isn't pictured on my fence like my quilts normally are).

To add to the chaos of it all in the middle of working on Claire's quilt I got a custom order from Katie on Etsy for a bunting quilt on Thursday afternoon.  I was in such a rush when I started making it that I made 70% of the quilt top before I realized that I was WAY off in my dimensions and had to start over.  I waited until yesterday to start over so I had a chance to clear my mind and enjoy my weekend before jumping back in.  After a whirlwind sewing session I'm happy to say that I finished the custom order and it looks fantastic.

I hope Katie likes it.  It's for her niece Sophia Joanne and she had me tweak the colors of the quilt slightly to include orange and take out the darker blue and grey that were in the original quilt.

She also added customization to her quilt.  It doesn't stand out as well in the pictures as it does in person, but it was a lot of fun quilting the letters down (as well as a lot of work).  I shipped it off this morning and now I can settle down and enjoy some selfish sewing.  I'm currently fussy cutting centers to make polaroid blocks for the *picture-perfect* polaroid block swap going on over at Flickr, as well as cutting squares for the Super Mario Bros QAL.

Issachar's quilt

This isn't the quilt top I thought I'd be posting about today but oh well-- it's still a fun quilt top.  This quilt is going to be a baby shower gift for my friend Juliana.

The pattern is a free one from Elizabeth Hartman called New Wave Quilt.  The free pattern can be found here.


I changed it up a bit to make it smaller.  Mine is 9 down and 4 across instead of 12 down and 6 across like the pattern calls for.  The hardest part of this quilt BY FAR was getting the points to line up. I got to the point where I'd use my basting stitch when sewing the vertical seams so I could check to make sure they lined up- then I'd make any adjustments needed- and then I'd go back and sew with my regular length stitch.


The colors I  chose were inspired by the elephant print I used. I really enjoyed working with so many solids on this one.   

I'm teaming up with my friend Rebeckah on this one to get it done in time, so I made the quilt top and she's going to quilt and bind it.  The shower is next weekend and unfortunately I'll be camping so I won't be able to make it but Rebeckah will be there and she'll be able to give it to our friend so she has it when her new little boy Issachar makes his appearance!

Floating Stars Quilt for Olive

I made this awesome star quilt about a month ago for my godson Joe's first baby girl, Olive.

When I found out he was having a girl I knew that my Timeless Treasures Going Places Pink Vespas fabric would be the perfect as a focus fabric.  At the time I really wanted to try out some floating stars, so I made a sketch and then turned it in to a plan.

Since I decided on having five floating stars I added two additional star fabrics: an orange heidi grace fabric with yellow bursts on it that I picked up at Joanns and a light pink with white polka dots that I also got at Joanns.  For the background I went with my go-to background fabric, Kona white.

It took me some time to get around to adding the white all around each star to make them "float", but once it was all together it was well worth it.

The fun part (and the long part) was the quilting.  I echo quilted around each star 1/2 inch apart from each other.  Quilting time probably took around 6 hours.  The back wasn't perfect, but for me it never is.

I gave Joe Olive's quilt at Pascha, the Eastern Orthodox Easter celebration.  It's traditional for families to share Easter baskets, and at our church you'll see baskets for kids full of bunnies and chocolate right there next to baskets for their parents full of wine and cheese.  We made Joe's family a basket this year that had beer for Joe, the quilt for Olive, reversible capes I made for Olive's two older brothers, some easter candy, and a children's book about Orthodox monks.

Olive's older brother Paul loved his cape and promptly put it on and ran around.  His other son Henry didn't come to the celebration since it's from 11PM to 5AM, and he's a little young to be out that late.  Joe loved the quilt, and I'm sure Olive loves it too.  So all in all the evening (and the quilt) was a huge success!